Stolen Prey by John Sandford

Lucas Davenport has seen a lot of murder scenes in his years with the Minnesota state police.  But he hasn't seen many as bad as this one.  An entire family, father, mother, young son and daughter, have been brutally murdered and left in their home.  The family owns a software business, hardly the kind of thing that arouses a lot of criminal interest.  Or does it?  Something about the carnage reminds Lucas of the brutal murders associated with Mexican drug lords.

As the investigator deepens, there appears to be some connection.  Several Mexican men were noticed near the crime scene.  It starts to look as if the company was being used to launder drug money with apparently something going very wrong.  Lucas reaches out to other agencies, federal ones as well as contacts in the Mexican police.  Mexico sends one of their top policemen to help with the investigation.  Soon, it appears that local banks are also involved as their accounts may have been used to finance the money laundering.  More bodies start to show up as the drug lords follow their scorched earth policy trying to find their missing money.  Can Lucas and his crew find the killers before the body count climbs even higher?

Readers of John Sandford will know what they are getting when they open the pages of this novel.  This is the twenty-second Lucas Davenport mystery and loyal readers have followed his cases for years.  Sandford has a good mix of solid police procedural and the occasional rogue steps outside procedure that can advance a stalled investigation.  This book is recommended for mystery readers.